AuthorTopic: A place for the wisdom of top-tier players (Read 14129 times)

When will you buy the BV/CR instead of Minion or BV/Minion?You need to buy at least 6 Minions to make this work. Then you need a Remake and another buy on BV/CR. These are at least 7 buys with more than $4 each. I might be wrong, but you do need more than 10 turns to make this happen here. And with only 6 Minions, you cannot have more than $10 from your Minions because at least one Minion must be used to discard. So I think, you would start to buy Provinces by turn 12 if all works out well - resulting in at least two double Province turns. But then, the two Tunnels are worth 4VP, the 3 Estates are worth 3VP.The BM player could start buying Points (not all Provinces, though) at about turn 7. He will get more Golds by discarding Tunnels. He might even buy Tunnel over Duchy for more Golds. Reaching 4 Provinces before turn 13 seems to be possible, even if you have only 4-card hands from turn 10 on. Among these 4 cards might be two golds and a terminal. It doesn't have to be each turn. Just every other turn would suffice. I'm really tempted to doing this.

Also, in a Minion deck, actually getting rid of stop cards is better than replacing stop cards with slightly less bad stop cards. I'm not sure if Remake or Spice Merchant is better for that; Remake lets you trash two Coppers per play, but on the other hand, Spice Merchant trashes one and still lets you buy something that turn.

In the beginning, a Spice Merchant who thins down a Copper to gain 2 cards nets you only $0.6 = 2*$0.8 - $1. If you trash it for the $2 you get $1. Either way I wouldn't expect you to hit $5 unless you are lucky or you have bought 3 Silvers. So I'm pretty sure you shouldn't be able to buy Minions consistantly before turn 5, maybe even later. Like in most setups, I would prefer trashing Estates first, and gaining Silvers for Estates is really good for your economy. Even on a "not so lucky draw" with 1 Estate and 3 Coppers you can thin down one Copper and exchange an Estate for a Silver.

-----

edit: I've tested this against the Bots. I was able to win all games except two. One game I lost due to rotten draw luck and misplaying it on top. The other game was a draw.

You don't get as many Provinces as I expected. nevertheless you can deny Border Villages and thus 3-pile before the Minion player is ready. It is risky, because you have to get at least one gold early on to be safe. On the other hand I won a game where I got the first Gold on turn 9. If your luck is bad, you can at least pile the Tunnels, sneak a Duchy or a Province every now and then and end the game quickly on a 3-pile. If you're doing well, you'll get so many points, your opponent cannot catch up any more. This strategy worked out even if the Bot baught a Familiar. Yet, it was more diffcult, if he did.

I think opening Navigator/Tunnel would not be smart as this would signal what you're going to do. Opening Remake/Oracle on the other hand might work. Remake your Estates into Tunnels and catch the Navigator later on. If your opponent goes for Familiar, you can do some more enginy stuff where Remake was enough to ignore Familiar as we have seen.

Border Village actually helped me more than the Bot as I can use it to 3-pile while getting Duchies. Most games I won with only 1 or 2 Provinces. If your opponent goes for the Minions, you can safely load up on Tunnels as they provide three benefits: they can be discarded for Golds, they provide points and they are a pile. You will have enough Golds to pile the Duchies, maybe even the Border Villages and the Duchies.

1. I don't think you need at least 6 minions, though. How do you get to this number?2. You can first get a province, try to get princess and go back to buy more minions.3. Getting 1 or 2 tunnels only does not seem consistent with the idea to get your deck 'flooded' with golds and have enough to have 8$ in a 4 card hand. 4. With princess and council room, it is no problem to arrive at double province turns, the lack of +buy is the limit here, i.e. with 1 CR and princess, you're 'limited' to triple provinces (I was - against banker bot, though, which is pointless).

Minion engine should win and it's not close. Tunnel is an awful defense against Minion.

I think the Tunnels can work well against Minion if you were going for Tunnels anyway, maybe as part of a Gardens slog or Silk Road Slog.

Tunnels can work as a part of a Gardens or a Silk Road slog, and that can work well against Minion, but I'm still not convinced that your opponent's Minions make your Tunnels better than usual.

It's more that the 4-card hand from Minion doesn't hurt so much when you're going for alt-vp. You shouldn't rely on your opponent's for Tunnel Gold, but it's yet another source of Gold in case your tunnel finds itself in a did hand.

I haven't watched the game in question, but based on what I know from the board the Tunnel player shouldn't be able to get far with 4-card hands. That's assuming the other player doesn't just transition to Border Village/Council Room. And Tunnel most likely sets back your Province gains on this Tournament board.

1. I don't think you need at least 6 minions, though. How do you get to this number?2. You can first get a province, try to get princess and go back to buy more minions.3. Getting 1 or 2 tunnels only does not seem consistent with the idea to get your deck 'flooded' with golds and have enough to have 8$ in a 4 card hand. 4. With princess and council room, it is no problem to arrive at double province turns, the lack of +buy is the limit here, i.e. with 1 CR and princess, you're 'limited' to triple provinces (I was - against banker bot, though, which is pointless).

1. I don't think you need at least 6 minions, though. How do you get to this number?2. You can first get a province, try to get princess and go back to buy more minions.3. Getting 1 or 2 tunnels only does not seem consistent with the idea to get your deck 'flooded' with golds and have enough to have 8$ in a 4 card hand. 4. With princess and council room, it is no problem to arrive at double province turns, the lack of +buy is the limit here, i.e. with 1 CR and princess, you're 'limited' to triple provinces (I was - against banker bot, though, which is pointless).

Minion engine should win and it's not close. Tunnel is an awful defense against Minion.

Take home message: don't give reasons, make blunt statements.

1. You should collide Minions to make efective use of them. This seems to be impossible with only 3 Minions - even more sonce you need at least $5 to buy another Minion. Maybe expecting a "Minion Engine" is not the correct thing here. With Tournament and Familiar you could adept very well to whatever your opponent does. So, yes, 6 was just an arbitrary number because this seems to be enough to activate at least 3 Minions for money each turn and still attack.2. I'm not sure which price is the best here. Probably Followers because of the cursing. Princess is useless in a hand without a Village. On the other hand - if you manage to get this going then double Province seems really easy. Around which turn do you see this happening? It might well be around turn 8 or 9, right? Then, this strategy would be superior. If you're not contested on the Minions, you're going to have lots of time. Otherwise, getting a Province first will probably make you lose the Minions split.3. One early Tunnel can be discarded 3 times to produce 3 golds. It's risky, but in such a setup each Tunnel bought before turn 7 will do this at the very least. Getting too many Tunnels early on is a risk. You're likely to get green hands and $12 hands without +buy. So pumping your economy carefully seems to fit better. After testing a few games I soon went into something like BM-Slog because I mainly bought Duchies and Tunnels and only occasionally a Province.I'm also pretty sure, Oracle will do me better later on, because two cards can be worth a lot - if I can chose them.4. I totally agree on that. Your limit is the +buy and the right situation to pick it up. I didn't think it could be worth picking it up before turn 10 or 11. This may well be wrong.

I didn't claim that Tunnel-Navigator-BM (or slog) would beat any Engine. I just said, it would beat Minions which is correct - unless the Minion player adepts to this. I suggest opening Remake/Oracle remaking one Estate into a Silver and the other two Estates into Tunnels. Buy a Navigator ASAP and get more Oracles. If you see your opponent go for Council Room, you need to adapt, though.

Probably I'm just too dull to play this Minion deck correctly. I cannot see where it wins easily, but I would be honored to get crushed on this. Honestly, I'm really not a good player, but I would like to perform against anyone who builds this engine.

Sometimes, the best call is the straightforward call. The big money strategy may be fast enough; buying that Gold or Province instead of those fancy actions may be correct. As cool as it may be when your engine finally works, when you go for the engine 100% of the time you lose track of the games where the engine actually can't catch up and a steady drive through the Provinces beats the jet-pack you're trying to build.

Probably I'm just too dull to play this Minion deck correctly. I cannot see where it wins easily, but I would be honored to get crushed on this. Honestly, I'm really not a good player, but I would like to perform against anyone who builds this engine.

Probably I'm just too dull to play this Minion deck correctly. I cannot see where it wins easily, but I would be honored to get crushed on this. Honestly, I'm really not a good player, but I would like to perform against anyone who builds this engine.

Didn't you have an opponent here who competes on Border Villages? And maybe one who disenables all your Tournaments? It looks impressive but doubleJack BM gets all the Provinces in 18 turns, too. If you're not contested, I wouldn't say it's more convincing than my Bot games.

It's not that I think the Minion deck is bad. It's more like I feel it's not quick enough.

If you have no plan to trigger your tunnels yourself, buying tunnel as defense against discard attacks will not work. Minion is a good case in point. If you have enough tunnels for your opponent's minions to trigger them often, then your 4-card hands are going to be pretty bad even with 8 golds in your deck.

If you do have some way to trigger it, then opponent's discard attacks can help you sometimes, so discard might even be a reason to go for tunnels. I suspect that this is probably going to happen about 30% of the time (30% of boards with tunnel, tunnel help, and a discard attack); I suspect that most decent engines will be able to force discard every turn and that will flatten you. If your trigger doesn't increase your handsize (vault, embassy), then you're going to be very hard pressed to hit $8 by playing your inn/whatever after getting hit with a discard attack.

Every junker has a cost. What I want is to understand those costs better so I can gauge power levels.

Depends on the junk, doesn't it? Ambassador is bad at ridding you of Ruins.

Also, what happens after the curses have run out? Mountebank is a bit worse than Tormentor drawing a Greed, Sea Hag is a Confusion, Familiar at least doesn't hurt (UNLESS he gives your opponents to activate Caravan Guards, Diplomats, Horse Traders etc), Torturer remains a Smithy (if you can bear the thought of your victim laughing at you because you don't find your pliers), Marauder is a terminal Bandit Camp.

Torturer chains are a way of building your engine which would nearly be viable if the Torturer wouldn't attack. During the early phase, the Torturer chain you build actually does something for your economy, more at least than two Ambdassadors.